Monthly Archives: November 2004

Robert Scoble talks about how he’s reading approx. 1000 Feeds.
You’re clicking an awful lot, Robert. I’m reading only 275 feeds at this time, but it looks like I’m somewhat more efficient. NetNewsWire allows me to read all my feeds just by hitting the space bar on my keyboard. No clicks. No labouring with Fitt’s law. Plus, the space bar is pretty, uhm, easy to hit.
Every time I’m hitting space, NetNewsWire advances to the next unread post, scrolls entries which won’t fit on a page etc. Very efficient. If I encounter a post which I would like to comment on or read more in-depth, I press “->” and the post will be loaded in a separate tab.
The feeds are organized by relevance, which means I will read our companies internal feeds first, then feeds related to software development in general, usual suspects etc.
I’m pretty sure NewsGator allows for keyboard navigation, too (although this would pretty hard on a Tablet PC, wouldn’t it?)

When you’re working with a tool, someone owns the keyboard, and everyone else is an observer. It’s easy to develop the habit of “check the database” instead of “talk with each other”. It’s easy for a manager to think that he’s managing the group when he’s really looking at his screen.

ZX81.
The very first computer I bought. It was a great piece of engineering, using only 4 chips to create a full-featured computer. Interesting enough, the CPU (Z80) was even responsible for screen refresh. That’s why there was a FAST mode, which suspended screen refresh and allowed for faster processing.
There was a chess program fitting into 1K of RAM. I wrote a shoot-em-up piece of software for the ZX81. Software was saved/loaded via a tape recorder.
Those were the days. We had stones for lunch every day. Every other day, there weren’t even stones.

…by Volker Weber.
Very cool. For mass adoption, phone/pc integration is crucial.
For quite a while, I was reluctant to use Skype because of the founders legacy (Kazaa), but I’ve finally gotten around to using Skype and it’s just a great piece of software. The sound quality is incredible. Works on multiple platforms. In terms of sound quality, it runs circles around iChat AV.